The Jindal School Center for Internal Auditing Excellence at the University of Texas at Dallas has honored ACFE President and CEO James D. Ratley, CFE, by creating an endowed scholarship in his name. The center will present the award annually, in an amount up to $2,500, to an outstanding UT Dallas accounting student studying fraud examination.

In this column, Christopher Shell, an internal auditor, describes his experiences in the loss prevention area. He shows that inventory misappropriation in the retail industry is a difficult and challenging fraud environment to investigate and recommends loss prevention as an excellent way for college students to gain real-world experience dealing with fraud prevention and detection.

ACFE training is unlike any other. If you want to be a fraud examiner, there’s no better place to get your education, training and credential. However, the training applies to both sides. In my own private practice, there’s plenty of room and good reason to work defense cases. In fact, the work is similar no matter what side you’re working on.

Your job interview is your audition. When your game is on, you focus on what the hiring manager wants and needs, and you own the audition — the interview — and the space in which you find yourself, rather than feel sucked into it like a semi-helpless victim.